The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [79]
He wanted to outwit the whole goddamn gang. Well, he could do that, but he wanted to bust them one and all. First Lonigan. Barn! Then Reilley. Barn again. Then Doyle, Kelly, all of them one right after the other. He wanted to bust them and he was... Yellow.
But it was more than being yellow. It wasn’t his yellowness, it was his feeling. The Irish didn’t have any feeling. They had thick hides and fists like hams. Fighting made him sick. When he went with the guys smacking Jews, he sometimes got so sick he felt as if he’d puke. He didn’t like it. He put himself off as a battler, and talked big and hard only because he had to. If you went around with the Irish and didn’t make yourself out a scrapper, you had one hell of a time. He had to use his noodle even there, so he could get along with them. They didn’t know how to do a damn thing but put up their dukes ... and look for Iris, the dirty …
He knew he was... yellow. He had gotten himself a rep as a tough guy by using his mouth and getting in with Doyle and Kelly, then with Studs after Studs had taken on the redhead over at Carter Playground, and now that Reilley was coming around he was nosing in with him, too. Well, he could lick some of the guys like Bob Stole, who was heavier than he was, or Benny Taite, or goofy Kenny Kilarney. But if anybody ever leaned on Kenny the whole gang would pile on him and send him to the hospital. He was supposed to be as tough as they were; but, well, it was just because a Jew had more gray matter in one little corner of his nut than an Irishman, or a whole gang of them, had in their whole damn heads. Yes, sir, if Studs ever let him have one, it would be curtains. But he had the rep for being as hard as Studs or any of them. And Iris had threatened to put her dress on and call the party off if he didn’t get out; and he had walked out like a whipped dog with its tail between its legs.
He walked around and sniped a butt. He smoked and brooded. He felt that he was different from the guys. All they ever wanted to do was to roughhouse around, make noise, give guys the clouts, raid ice boxes and have gang-shags with girls like Iris, the dirty .. .
He was different. He liked to read books. He thought of the books he read when he got a chance, late at night, after his goddamned old man was in bed, snoring. He thought of the characters, the goddesses of his own pretendings, who were like all the nice and fine things in the world. The Lady of the Lake, who had a breast of snow; Guinevere, who was the fairest of all flesh on earth; Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat. He was their champion, their knight; and he roamed through a wild world of his own imaginings... all for them. They were his, and none of the Irish bastards could know them, touch them, think of them, see them all white and fine and beautiful and understanding, and like a fine day. They were his. What did he care for fourteen-year-old Iris, the dirty… Her age limit was eight to eighty, and maybe she even got kids five and six. He walked and wondered which of the three goddesses he dream-loved the best—or maybe it was Rebecca from Ivanhoe? He tried to think of them all as one, and his thoughts got soft and beautiful like music. He wished that he could go home and read about them, imagining him-self as their knight, fighting on a white charger to protect their innocence. Then Studs Lonigan and the other dirty micks could have their Iris. But if he went home, his old man would blow his snoot off, calling him a nogoodfornothing loafer, who wouldn’t never deliver clothes, but always wanted to be out fighting with the Irish, or else reading books that would never do him no good. It was the sort of crap Davey could remember hearing ever since he could remember hearing any-thing. He hated like hell delivering clothes for the old man, but he never got any money any other way, unless he stole it. But he got sick of